Waiting for Discernment
How good are you at waiting?
Verse of the Day
“Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!”
Today’s Devotional
Do you love to wait? Long lines at the DMV or the grocery store, do those things bring joy? I don’t know any human that loves to wait. Patience is not high on many people’s asset lists.
Waiting on God is especially hard. Waiting to receive discernment and answers can be really discouraging. Because we cannot see what’s going on behind the scenes or in the spiritual realm. Many times, for me, it seems that there are lessons in the waiting. These are generally lessons that I am not excited about learning. Trust needs to grow. My need for God needs to deepen. My reliance on self needs to diminish.
Whenever the Lord waits or seems to delay, it always has a loving purpose behind it. We can trust that even when we don’t understand it. And let’s be clear about something, seeking for discernment from God is almost always going to involve waiting. God is not a vending-machine God. We ask, we obey in the meantime (which we will discuss over the next few days), and we wait. Sometimes we have to wait for a really long time. But we need to be prepared, as people of God, that seeking discernment is going to also involve waiting.
Have you ever considered that the Lord LONGS to be gracious to you? Think about that. Those words are actually in the Bible, that the God of heaven LONGS to be gracious to you. Sometimes I wonder if God is saying “no” to certain requests or is a form of graciousness. Maybe having to wait for discernment is part of His graciousness. He knows what I need and what I don’t. So perhaps his compassion comes in the form of waiting, so that we will learn, or in denying certain requests, because he knows better.
There is something very peaceful to me about this verse. God genuinely wants to extend grace and compassion to us. But then there is this statement of justice. How does that fit?
Enter Jesus.
God must punish sin and evil. Judgement must be passed. But God loves us so much, that in his grace and compassion he sent his own Son to take our punishment and judgement. What a gift.
I hope to get to the point in my spiritual growth that when I am in a season of waiting on God, I will trust in his timing. I hope to remember this verse. We are blessed when we wait patiently for God to act in His timing. We will be blessed when our trust grows and we confidently believe that God will move when the time is right. We will be blessed as we continue to seek God and obey while we are waiting.
Journal Prompts
Answer only the questions that seem relevant to you today.
What are you waiting on from God right now?
How hard is it for you to wait for God’s timing in this matter?
Do you feel blessed as you wait? In what ways?
How has God shown you grace and compassion?
How does it make you feel to know that God LONGS to shower you with grace and compassion?
NOTE:
I’d like to ask a little favor. Go back to the top of today’s post and look at the graphic. As we talk about waiting for discernment over the next few days, all of the images will be of dogs. There are no better waiters than dogs waiting for their humans to come home. May we wait on God in similar fashion.